of or pertaining to the lion.

lyrics of the brave new world… (sob).

sometimes i get really scared for our generation. for a number of reasons. we have NO attention span, which i discovered while teaching and marking for my undergrad classes this year. we use “netspeak” in day to day conversations and in ASSIGNMENTS (another fact i discovered while TA-ing this year). we are probably radiating our uteri with our laptop batteries. we think Four Loko is a good idea (!!!). we turn the volume up way too loud on our earbuds without knowing what the earbuds do to our hair cells. we like Uggs.

i realise i’m apparently a year behind on this one, but i just heard the song “toot it and boot it.” TOOT IT AND BOOT IT. and it’s not about flatulence, which, to be honest, would make me a lot happier with the song. the only good part of the song is the sample from the association. and i just cringed.

sometimes i DO get really scared for our generation. and maybe you can’t judge a generation based on its lyrics, but maybe you can. maybe the lyrics of the billboard top 100 hits or the biggest youtube sensations are the litmus tests for the people in the present generation. which, to be honest, is a scary thing.

in the modern day.

i mean, i realise that “incense and peppermints” is no anna karenina of songs. and “my ding a ling” isn’t mozart. so i’m not saying that previous generations of music are particularly better. flock of seagulls – not great. david bowie – a lot of coke moaning. steely dan – guhhhhhhh. even led zeppelin’s forays into mystical, lord of the rings shit – annoying and pretentious. but can i just present some evidence of our scary scary generation, PLEASE?

– friday – the mother of all evil crap songs. a girl who literally paid $2000 dollars to sing about WHAT CAR SEAT SHE’S GOING TO SIT IN ON THE DRIVE TO SCHOOL. and this piece of crap has over 100 million views on youtube.

– toot it and boot it – a song completely about “making a girl feel stupid” by hitting it and quitting it. that’s it. that’s all. just repeating the phrase “toot it and boot it”. yeah, if it was about actually tooting, it would be funny. but it’s not.

– soulja boy tell em – my least favourite song. ever. oh good a billboard number one has been created all from writing about a vile, misogynist sex act. unwitting teenagers (or witting, which is ten times scarier) danced to this the world over. the world over.

– black and yellow – guess what? i, too, can repeat random colours on a two-note musical scheme. do i deserve 67 million views on youtube?

and let me say that the female counterparts to these lyrical idiots are no better. i don’t understand the appeal of katy perry. i listen to her music. teenage dream is a sweet song. but she’s just reached some ridiculous honour where she is the most downloaded artist on itunes or something like that. really she’s just a blue wig and set of (great) breasts. her voice is not… amazing. and lyrically her album is a piece of crap. she made it to number one which a piece of crap lyric like “after a hurricane / comes a rainbow.” uh. uhhhhhh.

and don’t get me started on rihanna. how in the world did her song make it to number one? s&m? “sex in the air / i don’t care / i like the smell of it” yuck! literal yuck. and even lady gaga’s songs – which are musically complex at times – can be lyrical stinkbombs. but this what we want. we want this cotton candy fluff sugary easy to hear songs with mind numbing lyrics.

i’m so baffled by the oatmeal crap songs that we – our generation – is accepting for music nowadays.

don’t get me wrong. i have some of these songs on my itunes. i will dance to these songs if i hear them at the gay bar bingo night. they’re fun, i guess. and they deserve a spot in the musical world.

but what i realise is that they are musical junk food. they are the archie comics of songs. and sometimes i want a “ulysses” of songs. sometimes i want a “wasteland” of songs. sometimes i really just want poetry set to music.

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on a final note, i’d like to showcase bowie’s (uk) number one song ashes to ashes

“The shrieking of nothing is killing
Just pictures of Jap girls in synthesis and I
Ain’t got no money and I ain’t got no hair
But I’m hoping to kick but the planet it’s glowing”

let me compare that with rihanna’s (us) number one song only girl (in the world)

“La la la la/La la la la/La la la la
I want you to love me, like I’m a hot guy
Keep thinkin’ of me, doin’ what you like
So boy forget about the world cuz it’s gon’ be me and you tonight
I wanna make your bed for ya, then imma make you swallow your pride”

SUBTLETY.

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eat pray BARF.

if you need me i’ll be listening to records on vinyl and lying on my floor.